#love is not limited to romance

[skitskatdacat63]

Vettonso complaining about each other not respecting schrondinger's track limits on the radio compilation + Seb's commentary that made me a bit feral

Must include these sexy ass pics okay, it makes me feral how hard they race each other.

Also SO upset that we got this vid and there's also pictures(and presumably a vid out there somewhere) of Fernando, back then, ALSO debriefing this race. And yet we never got them together?????? Evil. Fucked up.

Imagine seeing them complaining about each other but also having to (begrudgingly if you're Fernando) compliment each other IN FRONT of each other. Maybe its a good thing it doesn't exist, bcs then I'd have a heart attack.

[yet-another-wlw-shipper]

Meen x Sol (or Son in some sources) moments.

Finally some answers why we sensed broken heart vibes between them.

(check all my Apple My Love the series edits)

[niriaveil]

you know, i know there's some grumbling regarding how the drifter tends to have their very personal conversations in the KIM messenger rather than face to face with the Hex (talking about the Zariman Incident, talking about Duviri) and not to mention the whole animating, voicing, and playing out the scene in a development standpoint.

But. but. but.

Do you know how much easier it is to have a serious conversation about trauma when there's a screen between you and the person you're talking to? How even when you're baring your heart open to the other person, at least you can do it. How many times have you choked up, unable to speak the words that you know you can articulate but there's so many emotions just caught up in your chest and your throat and tangling up everything you say? How many times do you start to talk about your own trauma before you just break down into tears, crying and unable to talk about it?

I think the KIM messenger talks make sense for the Drifter (for mine in particular, at least) because they can talk about Duviri. We all know the Drifter downplays what happened to them, laces their words with sarcasm and laughs it off, but it still happened; the intensity of how it weighs on them is known only to them, and even though they could talk to the Operator, Ordis, or Lotus - why? Why bother? ("You're the me that got rescued from this shit. I'm the you that did not. Not sure which of us got it worse.") There's bigger things to worry about, more battles to get ready for, and honestly... who would care. The kid got their shit together, they've got a parental figure in Lotus, a caretaker in Ordis, and the Drifter...

Well. They're the Drifter for a reason.

So, the Hex are curious. They want to know. Why is the Drifter called the Drifter, what happened in Duviri, what happened on the Zariman. And the Drifter, so lonely and so sad, and so very envious of the counterpart that got to escape, to get to have a family, to get to be loved and wanted and adored - and the Drifter, so used to being forgotten and abandoned, sits down at their keyboard and says, "Well. You know the top level story."

It's easier to talk about Duviri when you know that if, at any point, you can't do it anymore, you can log off. Shut it down. A power plug on that trauma buried down so deep in your brain you tried forgetting about it - and how'd that go, kiddo? - and the other person can say, "Hey. I see this is hurting you, we don't have to talk about it."

Putting the ball in the Drifter's court. Giving them control over how they approach what happened to them. Giving them control over how much they want to share. Giving them some fucking agency and control over something in their life that is profoundly theirs. But the Hex - as the ranks goes up and the chemistry gets higher - won't let the Drifter hide in their pain, they'll push and pull and say, "Hey, I care about you. Let me help. Please, let me help. Please trust me enough to let me try to help and care for you."

So... yeah. I just think Drifter talking about their problems through the KIM messenger is pretty good and a good idea for delving into their character, because we've seen how they downplay their trauma when you talk to them face to face.

[themiddleofthehill]

As an arospec person I am almost morbidly curious about romantic relationships. They're like unicorns prancing about in broad daylight and no one else seems to think it's weird.

"What do you mean? Everyone has a unicorn", they say. "If only they would't get me into so much trouble", they say. "Sometimes I wish I could stop the unicorn from eating my arm, but alas! there's nothing you can do about unicorns", they say.

How absolutely fascinating. And you see these "unicorns" everywhere? Tell me more!

Whenever I stare at someone for an extended period of time it's because I have left the physical realm and exist solely in a fantasy land doing something far more interesting than whatever was happening in the real world prior to said staring. And apparently for some other people that fantasy land intentionally includes the person on the receiving end of the stare?

There are sparks and butterflies and fireworks flying all over the place. Hearts are skipping beats and lungs forget how to breathe and the bones in your legs change their state of matter. Tongues are tied up and hands are shaking and brains are malfunctioning. And all of it is considered not only normal but desirable?

There are peope willing to uproot their entire lives for the sake of one person? There are people relating to the obviously fictional stories told in love songs and romance novels? There are people staying in toxic situations because they're in love, because they're told they are loved?

It sounds like magic. It sounds scary and inriguing and wonderful and absolutely crushing.

Sometimes I feel like I'm missing out. Sometimes I'm really glad I can look at all of it from the outside. Sometimes I wonder if people forget love exists outside of romantic contexts.

Everywhere I look there are unicorns frolicking in the bushes and no one seems to realise how absurd it really is.

It gets me every time. People actually feel like that.

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

Emma’s Entanglements

On this date, December 23 in 1815, John Murray first published Emma by Jane Austen (anonymously) in London, although the title page is dated 1816. Murray offered her 450 pounds for the copyright to the novel, plus the copyrights to Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, which she refused. Instead, she published 2,000 copies of the novel at her own expense and retained the copyright, paying Murray a 10% commission on sales of the edition. 

The story revolves around Emma Woodhouse, a young woman who fancies herself a matchmaker and is determined to oversee the romantic lives of those around her, often with humorous and unintended consequences. 

The novel explores themes of social class, relationships, and the complexities of human behavior, showcasing Austen's keen observations of character and society. Emma is notable for its use of free indirect speech, a narrative style that allows readers to get inside a character's thoughts while maintaining a third-person perspective. 

Often praised for its wit and character development, Emma is considered one of Austen's most accomplished works and has inspired numerous adaptations and reinterpretations in various media.

The images shown here come from Jane Austen’s Emma, with a preface by English author and poet Stella Gibbons (1902-1989) and illustrations in photogravure by the German American artist and designer Fritz Kredel (1900-1973), printed for the Limited Editions Club at the Thistle Press in New York in 1964 and limited to an edition of 1500 signed by the artist.

-View more of our Milestone Monday posts here.

-Melissa, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[howtomakeyousee]

[shannonsketches]

One last vent and then I'll go -- Toriyama saying he's not good at writing certain things is observably him being humble. Comedy is one of the most difficult things to do well, because in order to write great comedy you have to know how every other genre works, and Toriyama wrote great comedy.

Whether it's instinct or intentional skill, Toriyama handles romance very well, he just did it with genre savvy in the margins of a bigger story.

[bonobochick]

Corinne and Christopher's romance in Flowers in The Attic: The Origin. 📖 💌

[crimeronan]

i think what enthralls me most about mal/alina/nikolai is that i don't THINK the polyamory was intentional at all. or at least not the specific polyamory i'm reading. like, i think the intent was to subvert the trope of an angry rebellious royal and an angry rebellious chosen one who refuse to form basic political alliances through marriage even though it just makes fucking sense. and then i think the writers' further intent was to distance mal and nikolai from their worst shitheadery in the books by uniting them thru a deep emotional bond and genuine respect and trust and care for each other. like. it's an arranged-marriage throuple that has a lot of potential for toxic misery and the writers wanted to sidestep that by going "okay, but maybe it's more interesting if they're all friends who love each other instead"

then the EXECUTION of that concept is like. not only are nikolai and mal so chill with the other dating their girlfriend that that Alone makes the polyamory pseudo-canon, but nikolai and mal's friendship is also -- apparently intentionally?? -- written with a SHITLOAD of parallels to nikolai and alina's relationship???

i think the intention in THAT is to reinforce how nikolai and alina have a strong non-romantic platonic partnership. because nikolai does the same things that he does with alina with mal, too! who, you know, is a man! and who is not nikolai's betrothed! see! everyone is such good friends!! :D

and so of course the way it reads onscreen to me, spiders georg polyamory kitkat, is just. nikolai has two hands. and is bisexual. and wants to crawl into bed with both alina and mal so bad it's fucking UNREAL,

they're perfect. polyamory rights.

[mswyrr]

finally saw Lisa Frankenstein

SPOILERS BELOW

i love that this movie is about true love and the writing has no compunction about needing to pretend like true love has to be between moral people - soulmates can be kind of selfish assholes who are nonetheless absolutely perfect for each other and tender and good to each other

and i love, after choking on so many heroines who are so pure it's inhuman in recent YA (which I largely only read for canon f/f) for Lisa to just be... so id-tastic and her story to be driven by the intense feelings of teenage girl coming-of-age stuff that gets prettied up and erased

she was internalizing her pain the way a good girl is "supposed to" -she was hurting so much that she wished she was dead with him. instead, he comes to her and they BOTH come more and more alive as he kills the people who hurt her. in increasingly "unfair" ways because it's not about right & wrong

he's kind of her dark side, speaking to and expressing the things she's shoved down inside along with her will to live - as he acts those things out, as she is complicit and eggs it on, covering for him and feeding him the attempted rapist as a victim, her will to live comes back

but they don't do the "maleficent" (and the whole "bad girl but in a safe way" kind of story) thing of making Lisa's dark side "safe" and her only fairly getting revenge - the darkness the Creature speaks to and acts out is not fair, it is not safe or contained.

instead of internalizing her pain, Lisa shares in externalizing it and making other people hurt and she blossoms into herself. and who she is is a bit cringe in the best possible way? she's embracing her own life energy, or own crazy selfish lustful weird set of desires.

it's about Lisa's feelings and what she WANTS, morals enter nowhere into it. except when it comes to Taffy - the one person who really tried to love her at her most broken. everyone else abandoned Lisa emotionally--including her father--but Taffy tried to be there, as awkward as that could be at times

speaking of which: Taffy and Lisa make an interesting contrast to Needy and Jennifer from Jennifer's Body (also a film by Diablo Cody and she says they both take place in the same storyverse). both Jennifer and Lisa decide that what makes them feel most alive is embracing their inner monster, but Taffy doesn't go all "i have to kill the beast" the way Needy does. i like this much better. Taffy is wearing Lisa's mom's rosary at the end and, by doing so, accepting Lisa's "I love you" despite everything Lisa did. whereas Needy ends up ripping off the BFF necklace and rejecting Jennifer's love. In my mind the two films are a tale of two necklaces now lol - one where the "good" girl rejects the monster girl and the other where she accepts that love and carries it with her.

[mywitchlove]

"𝔼𝕟𝕕𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕤 ℕ𝕖𝕖𝕕"

𝕀 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕥𝕠𝕦𝕔𝕙 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕓𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕙, 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕗𝕒𝕥𝕖,

𝔸 𝕡𝕦𝕝𝕝 𝕥𝕠𝕠 𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕖.

ℕ𝕠 𝕨𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕓𝕖𝕥𝕨𝕖𝕖𝕟, 𝕟𝕠 𝕤𝕡𝕒𝕔𝕖, 𝕟𝕠 𝕥𝕚𝕞𝕖,

𝕁𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥, 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕤𝕠𝕦𝕝 𝕚𝕟 𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕖.

𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕞𝕪 𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕥𝕙, 𝕞𝕪 𝕨𝕙𝕚𝕤𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝕟𝕒𝕞𝕖,

𝔸 𝕤𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕜 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕟𝕤 𝕥𝕠 𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕗𝕝𝕒𝕞𝕖.

ℕ𝕠 𝕖𝕟𝕕 𝕚𝕟 𝕤𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥, 𝕟𝕠 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕝𝕕 𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕤𝕚𝕕𝕖,

𝕁𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕝𝕠𝕧𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕕𝕣𝕠𝕨𝕟𝕤, 𝕛𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕝𝕚𝕡𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕔𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕕𝕖.

☽◯☾

Photo: Pinterest

[spitedemon]

i really hope that ign article is kinda blowing things outta proportion, at least in terms of romance. to be clear, it is understandable to me that the inquisitor’s relationship with solas is going to matter in the grand scheme of things. solas is the thing tying rook and the inquisitor together, and whether you despise solas, love him, or are painfully indifferent toward him, he is an antagonist bioware has set up for this game. his decisions and actions are going to, and have already had, far-reaching effects on thedas. of course he is going to have a spotlight of his own. i’m not concerned with that.

in terms of solavellan though, like. again, i hope things are being blown out of proportion. bioware is clearly very proud of solavellan and loves their solavellan fans very much, and i’m glad solavellan people can expect a decent endgame after 10 years of waiting. but i will genuinely be so upset if every other inquisitor, every other romance path, gets demonstrably Less in comparison. female lavellan is one inquisitor among eight. solas is only romanceable by one specific type of inquisitor. if the rest of us are left with some throwaway “oh yeah we still write sometimes” lines regarding our romances i will be very disappointed. obviously we can’t know everything until the game comes out, but the fact that, in an article about why only three choices from inquisition are going to matter in veilguard, everything seems to round out into “solavellan fans are going to be pleased,” i’m left with a bad taste in my mouth.

[seunghosgf]

𐙚𓈒 Limited Run

˗ˏˋ Seo Yeon-ho X Kwon Jae-hyuk ˎˊ˗

리미티드 런 ── BL manhwa ⭑.ᐟ

[it-me-sannore]

All the recent Bridgerton season 3 promo has inspired me to reread my favourite bits of Romancing Mister Bridgerton.

One of my favourite motifs in this book is Colin being flabbergasted at how amazing Penelope is, and not understanding why others don't see it.

She was a siren, a goddess, and he wondered how on earth no one had ever noticed this before.

There's also this one:

He didn't bother to look among the dancing couples (which angered him - why didn't the other men think to ask her to dance?).

And there's this zinger:

He didn't know how he hadn't noticed it all these years. Was the world populated with stupid men, or merely blind ones?

Even better when he says it out loud, because she deserves positive affirmations:

"You are beautiful," he said, shaking his head in confusion. "I don't know why nobody else sees it."

And then there's this tasty morsel:

Her eyes shone with anticipation, and her lips - dear God, how was it possible that the men of London had never noticed how perfect they were?

I love how he loves her. It's just beautiful.

And she doesn't need to mean something to everybody because she means everything to him. Sighhh.

[saltyb0ba]

im soooo normal about ezran callum sibling relationship

the little kid who had to grow up too fast, leaving stolen jelly tarts behind for clean hands on the throne and the big kid who never got a chance to play house with his younger brother before worries took the place of imagination. the kid king who seems to be handling things well, but no longer laughs at jokes with his kind of humor, and would rather get to the point than have a bit of fun with finding out the answer.

ezran luckily has a strong support system and a brother that will be there for him no matter what, putting himself in danger just to ensure ezran's safety. he's bonded with zym on a psychic and emotional level, and can talk to animals with relative ease. making the burden of the crown just a bit lighter. he knows he has people he can reach out to and lean on, and takes advantage of that when the offer is handed to him. growing up hurts, but with loved ones surrounding him, it was okay. as okay as it could be.

callum is his own support system. soren's called him step-prince for as long as he could remember, and though it was never explicitly shown, it's not hard to infer the amount of damage that can inflict on someone's mind. he already was second in line to the throne despite being the older sibling, and to just have it drilled in your head again and again that someone doesn't want you there just hurts. and it forms an unhealthy mindset that sticks with him for a while.

soren's insisted that it was a joke, but it's not wrong for callum to take it personally. especially with how many times soren's repeated it. claudia lost his respect a long time ago. callum isn't really shown to have the same amount of familiarity with the royal court as ezran does, and his office is a bit isolated from the rest of the castle. it isn't where he sleeps (though sometimes falls asleep in), but even in his own quarters he's separated from ezran. that bed's either filled by rayla or just empty moonlight at this point.

callum's always taken his own path whereas ezran followed in his father's footsteps.

that's naturally led to callum exploring a new future alone (or at least, with minimal support) vs ezran having the entire castle staff to rely upon with centuries' worth of experience in handling the rule of a king.

and proven in the series, it's caused ezran to detach from callum a bit himself. how he thought callum's upset post-possession was about rayla and not the literal puppeting that had been going on. he was never able to see through his brother the way callum could see through ezran and that's likely intentional.

bait and zym are also like parallels to their relationship in a sense; ezran had accidentally batted bait away in his sleep and bait left, upset and a little angry -- until callum saw him and invited him to hang out with him. they don't have a connection like ezran and zym have (unless you wanna get super meta, since bait's sounds are made by jack desena), but they understand each other just as much as the king and dragon prince do. before that happened, however, bait was very clingy with ezran. see the connection?

they haven't abandoned each other, far from it. they've gotten more aggressive in their love, especially with the stakes raising and callum extremely prone to becoming a weapon. ezran would prefer to talk things out, though something tells me aaravos would rather have fun with his toys instead of discussing things. maybe the way they show brotherly love is different now, but callum knows what sacrifice he would have to make to protect his family, his brother. ezran doesn't want to lose callum, and is determined to find a solution that doesn't involve the loss of his brother. his only brother.

thank you for coming to my ted talk this was a massive brain dump that i just needed to get out haha! i'm a sucker for sibling relationships and theirs draws me in like no other.

[aashiyancha]

They're not showing up in the comics much but i still wanna shower them with attention so here's a doodle of the girls ♡